Team Foster: Community rallies behind youth pastor with skull fracture

By KATIE HANSEN Daily News Staff

Published: Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 04:21 PM.

The Foster’s 15-year-old son Andrew has been by Arisha’s side the entire time, and their 7-year-old Cody has stayed with family friends in Jacksonville. He has seen his father once.

Arisha describes her husband as and outgoing witty person who “loves to live life to the fullest making others laugh.”

“He always likes to bring a smile to someone’s face,” she said.

As evidence of the lives he’s touched, Don Williamson Nissan General Manager Alycia Tomazic said Chris’s accident has affected everybody at the dealership where he’s worked for approximately seven years.

“It’s so crazy for him to just not be here,” Tomazic said, adding that it’s the first thing on everybody’s mind each morning.

For that reason, she starts out the work days with an update on his condition as well as a prayer for Chris, who she said is a mentor and friend to all at the dealership.

“Chris is a special, special guy,” Tomazic said. “He’s always the person you can go in and talk to.”

When people describe Chris Foster, they say he’s the guy. The mentor. The friend. The go-to guy. The person to make you laugh. The whole package.

On New Year’s Eve, Chris, a husband and father of two, a youth pastor and finance manager at Don Williamson Nissan, fractured his skull playing football at a church youth lock-in. He has been in the hospital ever since.

Now a close friend is rallying the community for support by starting a fundraiser on youcaring.com to help the Foster family.

“Chris is like my brother,” said fundraiser organizer Tony Shaw Jr., recalling how Chris taught him how to play the drums. Now they both play in the First United Pentecostal Church of Jacksonville’s band together. “This guy, he does so much for the community.”

Among other things, Foster serves as the youth pastor at the church.

“Just to see the way that the youth are motivated through him is phenomenal,” Shaw said.

Shaw said Foster gives in so many ways and touches so many lives that it’s impossible to keep track.

“If he wore a hat for everything he did for our church, he’d been full of them,” Shaw said.

Shaw said at the time of his accident they were playing touch football out in the parking lot as they usually do, but Chris went out for a catch rather than play his usual post of quarterback.

When he went out for the throw, he slipped, according to Shaw.

“His feet basically went out all the way into the air, no body stopping him, it was all head,” Shaw said.

Chris was transported to Vidant Medical Center in Greenville that night for emergency brain surgery, but when he got to the hospital the doctors decided to wait because the swelling in his brain had stopped.

Chris has gone back and forth out of consciousness. Chris’s wife Arisha Foster said the first week he was in the hospital, Chris was recovering quickly and he was supposed to go to rehab. But on Jan. 6, he went into cardiac arrest and was without oxygen for 16 minutes. Doctors told Arisha that time caused more brain damage. Since then he has not been conscious and has been on life-saving measures such as a temperature-regulating machine and a ventilator.

“The doctors said the only way my husband would be able to be released from the ICU unit would be if he would be able to regulate his body temperature on his own and breathe on his own,” Arisha said.

On Jan. 15, Arisha said he was breathing 75 percent on his own, but still on a ventilator. He was also regulating his own body temperature.

Arisha also said the medical team’s assessment of Chris was that even if he recovers enough to breathe on his own and regulate his own body temperature, he will be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, and Arisha will be his caretaker for the remainder of his life.

But she said she still has hope. Her idea of recovery for Chris is him sitting up in his bed and walking out of the hospital.

Arisha hasn’t left the hospital since Chris was admitted and she said she doesn’t plan on leaving until he does.

“I feel I won’t leave this hospital until it’s he and I walking out of here,” Arisha said.

Chris’s parents, Bobby and Linda Foster, residents of Jacksonville for decades, have been back and forth between Jacksonville and Greenville since the accident.

The Foster’s 15-year-old son Andrew has been by Arisha’s side the entire time, and their 7-year-old Cody has stayed with family friends in Jacksonville. He has seen his father once.

Arisha describes her husband as and outgoing witty person who “loves to live life to the fullest making others laugh.”

“He always likes to bring a smile to someone’s face,” she said.

As evidence of the lives he’s touched, Don Williamson Nissan General Manager Alycia Tomazic said Chris’s accident has affected everybody at the dealership where he’s worked for approximately seven years.

“It’s so crazy for him to just not be here,” Tomazic said, adding that it’s the first thing on everybody’s mind each morning.

For that reason, she starts out the work days with an update on his condition as well as a prayer for Chris, who she said is a mentor and friend to all at the dealership.

“Chris is a special, special guy,” Tomazic said. “He’s always the person you can go in and talk to.”

The dealership recently ordered Team Foster bracelets to show their support. Tomazic said they will distribute them at work and also make sure Arisha and the church get them as well.

Shaw said people who don’t even live in the community have been touched by Chris and his family. The proof, he says, is in the Facebook page called Those Touched By The Life Of Chris Foster, which they have created to show support for him and his wife Arisha Foster, and their two children.

“We’ve been calling it Team Foster,” Shaw said. “His big thing for the youth this year was Unity. Unity. Unity.”

Shaw said even more than monetary donations, “we could use the prayers.”

Most every day, he gets on the YouCaring website and posts an update on Chris’s condition. People also use the Facebook page to post their prayers and good wishes for his recovery.

Shaw said Arisha hasn’t asked for anything; however, Shaw said she hasn’t left her husband’s side, so he said he would like to raise some money to get her and Chris’ parents a hotel room across the street from the hospital.

“To get away from that stress, because you know every day it’s moving forward or moving backward and it’s a roller coaster,” Shaw said.

He said he would also like to get her some basic items such as toiletries for her everyday needs.

“She’s been incredibly strong,” Shaw said.

The rest of the money will be used to help with medical expenses and helping with the family’s costs getting to and from Jacksonville to Greenville, Shaw said.

Donations can be given through youcaring.com/teamfoster, or Shaw said if people do not feel comfortable giving through a website, they can give directly through their church.

Donations can be dropped off or mailed to the United Pentecostal Church attn.: Team Foster located at 140 Piney Green Rd. in Jacksonville.

Arisha said she was humbled to learn about the fundraiser being organized for her family in light of Chris’s accident.

“I was overwhelmed with the act of kindness that has been showed to our family,” she said. “You don’t realize how much you meant to people until you’re in a crisis situation and you see the love, the support.”

Over the weeks since Chris has been in the hospital, Arisha has been showered with testimonials of how the Foster family has touched the lives of people in their church and throughout the community by things as small as giving simple pieces of advice or providing a meal to someone in a time of need.

She said they have also received abundant support from the wider Christian community from all over the world who has heard about their family through their church’s network — Arisha even received a recording of a church in Africa praying for Chris’s recovery.

“They don’t know me from Adam, but because we are a body of believers, they support us,” Arisha said. “We are pushing until something happens.”

Arisha said she still believes a miracle will happen, and she puts updates on her Facebook page to encourage people who are praying for her family to continue being strong. She invites people to friend her to keep updated with Chris’s journey.

“What I want the public to know is miracles happen today,” Arisha said. “Prayer does change situations. There is a God and there is nothing that is impossible for Him to do, and all we have to do is believe.”

Want to help?

Send the Foster family well wishes at https://www.facebook.com/groups/558615544230172/. Donate to help the family at youcaring.com/teamfoster.

Donations can also be dropped off or mailed to the United Pentecostal Church of Jacksonville attn.: Team Foster located at 140 Piney Green Rd. in Jacksonville.